[Community Sequel] [FINISHED] 40 Monsters Challenge

[CBM]

The switches at not related to the spirit, they lower floors to give Access to the red Key and to give Access to lowering a gate in the mountains

The lava is swimable for a while and most places you can crawl back to shore

You can finish the map with 0 coins if you wanted

The coins are optional... they can only be used for buying chainguns and medkits at the village

Each area that can lower a gate show status with bars that lower according to the gates lowered

I'll take a look at the other things...

[CBM]

Some feedback.

maybe my hellgate is just not a good fit for this project, I have made a smaller map, that while still large, features a castle with a more arcade styled gameplay

this is already located in map slot 31, has custom music in ogg format that comes in below the 5 MB limit and it is called Castle Master, it is my way to honor the memory of the game called castle master, give it a try... remember to warp to map 31 when testing

https://ufile.io/pe1c5r7h

the tune is the original music made for Castle Master by Matt Furniss in 1990

http://www.lemonamiga.com/?game_id=1258

I have no idea if the tune is copyrighted, but I have found an alternative that is free to use for non-commercial projects, if it becomes an issue...

http://dig.ccmixter.org/search?searchp= ... strumental

A Series of Smooth and Orderly Transitions
by gurdonark
free for non commercial use.

The OGG version of "A Series of Smooth and Orderly Transitions" comes in at just 2,78 MB

[Accensus]

@Rifleman: On second thought, it turns out that the UAC door misalignment is a texture pack bug. You can keep it as it is, just in case. It's not that big of a deal.

@CBM: Hmm, I will give that one a try tomorrow. Kind of burned out on Doom for today.

[CBM]

@Rifleman: On second thought, it turns out that the UAC door misalignment is a texture pack bug. You can keep it as it is, just in case. It's not that big of a deal.

@CBM: Hmm, I will give that one a try tomorrow. Kind of burned out on Doom for today.

ok, I found a script error, its fixed in this version:

https://ufile.io/gvxy2hh6

[CBM]

@CBM: Hmm

Its just that I Think I need to reThink the whole inner hell map

Something like this

1. Being forced to talk to a questgiver at the start
2. Collecting Enough coins to buy a Ticket to a ship (the exit)
3. Keeping the good parts like the village, marble tower and the 2 locations from the original screenshots that you liked
4. Recycling the rest in other maps

The Castle master map:

The map has 4 spawn spots that gets activated in turn and each spawn 10 monsters. The Player needs to kill atleast 30 to exit. The exit is in the Temple. Watch out for rising blood levels. At high difficulty more monsters spawn at the same time and the selection is more badass... Ie tougher monsters will appear

Ie. Instead of just zombies and imps ... Cacodemons would Also appear at higher difficulties

[Accensus]

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- HudMessage is dumb and doesn't support new lines, resulting in "\n 30 is the minimum..." You'll have to use two HudMessage calls and a Delay between them.
- The monster kill counter is incorrect and doesn't account for infight kills. I think the player doesn't need that much guidance. Automap shows the proper number anyway.
- Make the startup text go slightly faster.

More indepth:
I like the premise. However, it currently violates two rules: spawns more than 40 monsters (counter went up to 58 at one point), and the music cannot be in .ogg format (unless it's ambience).
The design is neat but I'd move the battle to the courtyard rather than underneath the castle. It's too large of an area to both circle around, looking for monsters, and be fun at the same time. I retract my previous statement about the Large maps being the size of Doom II's MAP20. It won't work as well in this project due to the low monster count. Here's what you can do that I think will make the map feel and play better:
- Remove the different floors and work entirely in the courtyard. Use the castle itself just for atmosphere.
- Add some elevation so it's not all the same height.
- Add houses and alleys in the courtyard. It'd be much better to hunt for monsters in a more "town-y" environment.

All in all, this map is indeed much better. I'd say go forward with this one.

[CBM]

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- HudMessage is dumb and doesn't support new lines, resulting in "\n 30 is the minimum..." You'll have to use two HudMessage calls and a Delay between them.
- The monster kill counter is incorrect and doesn't account for infight kills. I think the player doesn't need that much guidance. Automap shows the proper number anyway.
- Make the startup text go slightly faster.

More indepth:
I like the premise. However, it currently violates two rules: spawns more than 40 monsters (counter went up to 58 at one point), and the music cannot be in .ogg format (unless it's ambience).
The design is neat but I'd move the battle to the courtyard rather than underneath the castle. It's too large of an area to both circle around, looking for monsters, and be fun at the same time. I retract my previous statement about the Large maps being the size of Doom II's MAP20. It won't work as well in this project due to the low monster count. Here's what you can do that I think will make the map feel and play better:
- Remove the different floors and work entirely in the courtyard. Use the castle itself just for atmosphere.
- Add some elevation so it's not all the same height.
- Add houses and alleys in the courtyard. It'd be much better to hunt for monsters in a more "town-y" environment.

All in all, this map is indeed much better. I'd say go forward with this one.

yes, okay... thanks for the feedback

I was a bit worried about the castle crawling myself

the frag counter only goes up when the player kills an enemy, however I could easily make it so that it just counts whenever a monster dies regardless of its killer

for the houses, I could reuse some stuff from the village I made on the other map...

I'll fix the startup text

the same mutators still apply (lava floor and 3d floors)

I will try to make sure that no more than 40 monsters will spawn

what format does the level music need to have?

[Accensus]

the same mutators still apply (lava floor and 3d floors)

The thing about the lava floor mutator is that lava is a constant hazard and not just surrounding the map.

what format does the level music need to have?

From this page: https://zdoom.org/wiki/Music_format

• Midi-based formats
• Module formats
• Emulated formats

[9Rifleman]

Took some time today to do some fixin', details below:

MAP25:

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-Fixed the portal
-AV now teleports away right after it's freed
-the stimpack in one of the tanks in the first room(not sure you noticed that one) replaced with a Medikit

I consider this one finished for now.

MAP06:

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-Starting room lift delay roughly halved - was about 5 second, now it's about 2.5. Wanted to make it shorter, but demons often got stuck on the edge of the shaft
-Doortracks now unpegged
-Made the falling nukage more transparent
-Still working on music

-You are right here, I am using Strife style railing, which makes the lowest 32 units blocking. Apparently this happens on the water bed and since I can't fix it, I remade the secret a little to avoid it as much as possible
-Crusher textures added
-This one proves to be a bit of a challenge. I tried several different scripts, but can't get the nukage to rise any other way than using Ceiling_RaiseByValue. I used speeds 2 and 3 for the build you played. The number has to be an integer and the only
lower speed is 1, which as I said seems too sluggish. So for now I only left speed 3 for NM skill and set all others to 2. I made the starting nukage level significantly lower, which gives player about 30% more time. It takes almost 4 minutes now for the
nukage level to reach the limit of no escape using speed 2. See how that works for you when I upload a new build.
-This wasn't a part of your feedback, but I added 1 more monster, rounding the count to 40. It is located outside the hazard zone and should not delay player running from the nukage.

I'll upload new builds within a few days, wanna fix the music first. I thought I saw it in the design doc that OGG is allowed, but I guess not. I am using it for MAP25 music as well, so I expect you'll want me to change that, too...

Since I am not an expert on music formats, any suggestion which one to pick, so the tracks sound as they do now?

MAP36 got delayed by this and IRL stuff a bit, but I should have an update next week.

[Accensus]

MAP25 is fine because it's an ambient track. Those are explictly covered by the rules so no need to change it.

And no worries about MAP36, there's still a looooot of time.

As for the music format, I'm hardly an expert on those either so just take your pick. I think Module formats aren't affected by soundfont? Can't confirm that but IT modules are commonly used so it's probably a good start.

[CBM]

the same mutators still apply (lava floor and 3d floors)

The thing about the lava floor mutator is that lava is a constant hazard and not just surrounding the map.

Ah ok, any ideers how I could do that with the castle map? or should I just stick with the 3d floors mutator?

I wanted a bit more space to make an actual small village so I did a 6 tower castle to serve as 'atmosphere':




now I need to add buildings, the temple will return to the courtyard as I liked that the player sees the exit at almost the moment he enters the castle

some of the other houses might be the ones from the village in the old map

[Accensus]

One idea is to make the castle a lava pit and have paths and roads be a 3D floor with gaps between the houses and the paths (except for the path that leads to the door). The houses themselves can be normal sectors for the sake of sanity. This means that the player can potentially fall down into the lava if they're not careful. Of course the paths should be wide enough and not Doom II's Chasm-tier 8-map-units-wide sectors.

[CBM]

One idea is to make the castle a lava pit and have paths and roads be a 3D floor with gaps between the houses and the paths (except for the path that leads to the door). The houses themselves can be normal sectors for the sake of sanity. This means that the player can potentially fall down into the lava if they're not careful. Of course the paths should be wide enough and not Doom II's Chasm-tier 8-map-units-wide sectors.

Thanks I"ll try that and See how it goes

[9Rifleman]

MAP25 is fine because it's an ambient track. Those are explictly covered by the rules so no need to change it.

And no worries about MAP36, there's still a looooot of time.

As for the music format, I'm hardly an expert on those either so just take your pick. I think Module formats aren't affected by soundfont? Can't confirm that but IT modules are commonly used so it's probably a good start.

After playing with this for a couple hours I can now say that it's either not possible to just convert the track to any of the allowed formats or I just cannot do it. I managed to convert it to MIDI, and it's hilariously horrible. Can't convert it to MOD because something something compression. Even tried to work with a mod tracker for this.

What I can do, is either keep the format but recut it and lower the quality ever so slightly, so it sounds the same and loops nicely and fits within the file size limit. Or I can just pick another track, preferably something already in MOD. Some Unreal music could work(been looking at Dirt and Isotoxin, one Deus Ex track sounded okay too). I would consider some nice old game MIDI music as an alternative.

Which would you prefer?

[Accensus]

Which would you prefer?

I personally consider the rules more of a set of guidelines than laws, so I'll allow this kind of deviation. I think the track for MAP25 is nice so let's keep it. Do see if you can manage to lower the size and get it to loop nicely.